An arts collective serving Queens, NY

Chris Van Strander

Chris Van Strander is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and actor. He’s received a Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance Grant, and been a Finalist/Semifinalist for The O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, The Playwrights’ Center’s PlayLabs, Page 73 Productions’ Playwriting Fellowship, and Ensemble Studio Theatre’s One Act Marathon, among others. His screenplay “25” won the Filmmakers International Screenwriting Award.

Chris’s work has been produced and developed internationally at over two dozen theaters and festivals, including: Circle East Theater Company (formerly the Circle Repertory Lab), Bloomington Playwrights Project, Live Girls! Theater (Seattle), Theater Catalyst (Philadelphia), The Asylum Theatre (Las Vegas), The Rogue Valley Plays Festival (Ashland, OR), Emerging Artists Theatre, Collective:Unconscious, The 92nd Street Y, The Director’s Company, The Management, The Neighborhood Playhouse, The New York International Fringe Festival, as well as the Minnesota, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Vancouver Fringe fests. His play THE MOTHERING INSTINCT is published by the International Centre for Women Playwrights.

Chris is a member of The Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights’ Center, Circle East Theater Company, SunsetGun Productions (Minneapolis), the ‘Wright On! Playwrights Group, and Packawallop Productions’ Pack. He graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (Experimental Theater Wing), and studied with Maria Irene Fornes, Mac Wellman, and Jeffrey M. Jones in the Flea Theater’s ‘Pataphysics Workshops.

As an actor, Chris has appeared in film, TV, regionally, Off-Off-, and on Broadway. He’s originally from Allentown, PA, and lives in New York City. Every ten years he hikes across Spain.

Chris is especially interested in creating work for nontraditional spaces: site-specifically, his plays have been staged everywhere from boats to bars to the rooftop pool of a Holiday Inn.